Peg and Jim, carfree in the mountains!

The main reason we have arrived at this particular point has more to do with what we couldn't, or wouldn't do, than what we planned on doing.
I just couldn't work in certain industries because of their contributions to war efforts, or the toxic polluting side-effects of their products.
I also couldn't stand working indoors, and took a job as a mailman, just to save a few bucks so I could travel.

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We had already been walking or riding our bikes to work for several years when we began to realize that decisions we'd made over the years, through avoidance of things we didn't care for, had brought us to this small community where everything we needed was within walking or bicycling distance, including our jobs.

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By the mid 1990s over 3 million Americans had died as a result of automobile accidents.
And that doesn't take into account the scarred lives & bodies, the crippled victims, or the incredible toll on wildlife that has been killed by cars and displaced by habitat destruction, or an entire century of air & water pollution and strip mining.

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I asked her with a knowing smile if she wanted to get another car, "when hell freezes over" she smiled back.
For us it has meant newfound freedom.
Freedom from the expense of gasoline, maintenance, tires, oil and insurance.
Freedom from fear, freeways & parking lots, and freedom from being confined in a hurtling tin & plastic capsule.

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But it mostly seems like we're just going on intuition, we avoid what we don't like and try to focus on what we love.

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Eventually, we'd like to live each moment with deliberate clarity, and share what wisdom we may have gained as elders.